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Salad

Banana Salad

A salad of sliced bananas and lettuce dressed with a creamy mustard vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Banana Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Slice the bananas and arrange them on lettuce leaves.

  2. Add a few nuts.

Make the dressing

  1. Prepare the dressing: mix salt, mustard, butter, sugar, cream, cornstarch, egg yolks, and vinegar in a double boiler.

  2. Stir over heat until it thickens, then strain.

  3. When ready to use, thin the dressing with ½ cup whipped cream if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Lettuce + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Banana + lettucetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together198 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing and enrich it through setting as they cook.
Cornstarch
Thickens the dressing by swelling in the heated liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the dressing and bananas.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until it thickens. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated. Gentle heat in a double boiler lets them thicken the dressing smoothly, so stir constantly and keep the water below a hard boil.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (banana, lettuce, mustard, butter, sugar, cream, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, lettuce, mustard, butter, sugar, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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